


Apples And Oranges

by cyus (cruentum)



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-06
Updated: 2012-03-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:57:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruentum/pseuds/cyus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Filming's wrapped and the quiet silences stretch a bit, but it's good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apples And Oranges

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on LJ 23/10/2010

Behind Bradley the sun was going down over London, glinting dark orange off the windows on the house opposite. Colin passed the bottle of beer back across the kitchen table. Bradley took a swig and flicked a crisp across the table at Colin, grinning around the mouth of the bottle when Colin ducked and managed to escape the assassination attempt.

They'd managed to communicate in grimaces and pantomime for the last hour, playing an elaborate game of charades it seemed. Colin angled for the crisp on the kitchen floor with one socked foot and drew it closer until he could pick it up.

"You're not going to eat that," Bradley said when the crisp was halfway to Colin's mouth. "There's either something animal on that," he continued, "or something that'll keep you in the bathroom for the rest of the night."

"And here I thought you'd swept," Colin replied. He made to shove the crisp into his mouth but crumbled it to dust on the table top instead, sweeping his finger through the dust to paint his initials, stopping short of a heart.

"Yeah, okay." Bradley chuckled and passed the bottle back to Colin, watching him. He reached across the table, finger worming towards Colin's makeshift sketchpad, but Colin got his defenses up in time and leaned over the table, firmly planting his arm in the way of Bradley's hand. Colin continued to draw in potato crisp dust until Bradley sat back with a huff and the bottle held in his lap again.

They were still getting back to life between filming and it chafed in the silences and the too-much-time and runs to Tesco for inanities like deluxe toilet paper because it came with flowers on and Bradley was making an ironic statement.

The sun halo-d Bradley's head in orange, and Colin couldn't stop staring at it. Couldn't stop reaching out and brushing potato crisp fingers through it either. Bradley let him, not breaking eye contact, having them both breathe in each other's space. Eventually the corner of Bradley's mouth twitched and Colin tore himself away and made the _gimme_ -gesture with index and middle finger until Bradley passed the beer over.

"I keep waiting for them to-"

"Do you think they'll-," Colin said at the same time, setting them both laughing.

"I keep waiting for them to give us a ring. Oh yeah, hey, we found another ten pages we have to film, so sorry," Bradley continued.

Colin shrugged and made the woo-magic gesture with his hand and lifted the beer bottle with the other. He should mutter one of the spells but off-hand he couldn't think of any and he left it at the cheap effect of pseudo magic and shook his head. "I've still got it," he said.

"It's sizzling."

"Oh yes."

They'd spent yesterday naked. Colin hadn't even quite made it from the bed other than to get a coffee in the morning and his laptop from the mess of Bradley's desk and they'd watched films and caught up on the In-Betweeners and discussed the merits of apples versus oranges and who would survive a zombie apocalypse. (Pineapples, the best of everything, according to Bradley)

Bradley picked at the potato crisps, crunching down on them. Outside a car drove past, a few voices rang out, then the relative quiet again as the sun disappeared, taking the orange glow and leaving them with dusk going on darkness.

Bradley began telling a story with potato crisps while Colin laughed in the appropriate places, or what looked to be the appropriate places, and drank down most of the beer until the story had gone on for much too long and moved from funny to something philosophical or possibly something about giraffes and involved too many secret finger signals Colin couldn't even decipher.

"God, you're rubbish," Bradley said eventually and demanded the beer back.

Colin handed it over. "Was it Shakespeare? It looked like Shakespeare for a while there. Richard the Third?"

"Kill me now," Bradley groaned around the mouth of the bottle, rolling his eyes.

The glow from Colin's laptop shone into the kitchen from the bedroom, leaving a sliver across the floor. The moon and street lamps from outside left another sliver coming from the window.

Colin scraped his chair back and stood where the beams crossed on the tiles, then followed the sliver of light to the window and leaned on the ledge, glancing out, cheek pressed to cold glass.

Before long their flatacation (Bradley's word, not his) with its exciting adventures of toilet paper and "laundry, Colin, why do I have to do the laundry?" would turn into spending the nights around town with Bradley's friends and then flying out to stay with Colin's family.

"We should go camping," Colin said against the window, breath fogging the glass as he squinted up at the sky, the pale moon.

"It's the middle of October," Bradley replied, glancing over his shoulder before, clearly torn between the packet of crisps he didn't want to leave behind, wanker, and Colin. He stood from his chair and came to stand behind Colin. "We'd freeze our balls off."

"I can keep them warm."

Bradley groaned in judgment of lame jokes, hiding his face in the back of Colin's neck as he stepped in close, pressing his chest to Colin's back. Bradley's breath was warm, puffing past Colin's cheek.

"In a jar," Colin added, grinning when Bradley swatted at Colin's hip.

Bradley inhaled and exhaled, and Colin tried to match his breathing rhythm to that because it was one of these ultimate-lovers kind of thing, like sleeping all entangled and knowing the order of the bathroom routine, but so much for that when Bradley sucked at the skin just below Colin's hairline.

"Seriously."

Bradley laughed, the sucking getting a bit of teeth action in the process. He turned Colin around and Colin let him, pressing his crotch to Colin's. His nose and breath was hot on Colin's glass-cold cheek.

Colin drew his fingers through Bradley's hair, tugging a bit at it when Bradley kissed a line down his jaw then pressed a beer flavored kiss to Colin's lips before, _hard to miss that, James_ , he eyed the potato crisps back on the table and disengaged long enough to get a handful and cram it into his mouth, grinning at Colin broadly.

Colin glanced out the window again, trying to make out the big romance and stars and all that good stuff, but above London, he was pretty sure the few blinking lights he could make out were airplanes.

Not that he minded. It was good, yeah? Whatever this was, beer and potato crisps and stupid boyfriends with a hand down his boxers. It was good.


End file.
